


nothing gold can stay

by Amber



Series: Create Something Every Day! (October 2018) [17]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical suicidal ideation, Cunnilingus, F/M, Grief, October Prompt Challenge, Past Sasha James/Tim Stoker, References to Past Use of Sex as Currency, Trauma, despite the prompt there is no physical damage to eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 16:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16498658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Amber
Summary: Prompt 19: Eye Trauma.





	nothing gold can stay

So there's this girl.

Not really the sort of sentence that usually applies to Tim's life, unless he's telling the story of how he got a trace run on a license plate, a file he wasn't meant to have. So there was this girl at the station, and we're having dinner Friday. So there was this girl watering her plants and she invited me up to her place which got me inside the building.

Not that it's just girls, not for Tim. There was this guy who Tim went down on while he hacked into a client's list of calls. There was a security guard who agreed to let Tim go even though it was private property. So there's this guy. There's this girl. They wanted me, because people always want me, and that made it easy.

What else is a body for?

What else is life if not saying yes to things?

If he's learned one thing from Danny— 

But. No. The girl. This girl. Georgie Barker. She shows up at the Institute asking about Jon, but he's off on some overseas adventure without really having told anyone about where he'll be, so nobody has answers for her. Tim has his own set of questions, namely: how does Jon have any friends outside of the Archives?

"You're not related, are you?" he asks, playing up the distaste a little for a laugh and feeling more like himself than he has in ages.

Georgie rolls her eyes at him. "We went to Oxford together."

"Dated for a bit," Melanie adds helpfully.

"Really!" says Martin, high pitched, "Dated Jon!"

"Ohh," says Basira, "Is this your podcast friend, then? The one who told you to look up Jon in the first place."

"Yeah," says Melanie, and with a knife-sharp smile at Georgie: "But don't worry. I'm not holding a grudge." Martin looks like he might be, though. Tim decides maybe it's time for Georgie to go.

Only... she's pretty, and proactive, and everything in his life is really shit, like just really terrible including this job but maybe he could have one, one good thing come out of it even if all he can think about sometimes is how much it hurt to lose Sasha and how he never even knew what she really looked like no matter how many times he makes Melanie describe her— 

"Hey," he says. "You should have dinner with me."

"With you?" Georgie echoes, brows raising. "You're Tim, right? Look, if you just want to piss off Jon, I'm not the way to go about it, promise."

It occurs belatedly to Tim that Jon may have mentioned him to this woman. That what Jon has to say about him probably isn't very nice.

"It's not like that," he says, annoyed. At her, at Jon. At himself. "Christ. Forget it. We'll tell him to call you, though I bet you'll see him first."

"Oh yeah?" says Georgie, gamely. "Willing to ride a couple pounds on that?"

It's only later, once she's left, that he recognizes the echoes of his own bitterness in that weird bet they made.

He loses. It surprises him, and then it doesn't — of course Jon comes to the Archives before he comes anywhere else. God forbid he do anything other than report straight back here for further brainwashing from their middle-management _creep_ of a boss. Still, one upside of Jon being a prick: instead of asking for him to hand over the ten pounds, Georgie says "Well, guess you better buy me dinner then."

So there's this girl, now, this girl in Tim's life. And she lets him stay at her flat — they go on a few dates first, of course, and Tim buys her Hungarian and they talk about what it feels like when Jon pulls your stories out of you, unspooling some private part of the self.

"It's like unraveling knitting," says Georgie, fumbling for a simile.

"It's like sex," says Tim flatly. "Good sex, where they take something you can't get back."

Georgie snorts. "Not that Jon would know the first thing about that." Still, she's eyeing him.

It's two dates later in her bedroom, as she straddles him in her bra and jeans, that she says, "Hey. Tim. We don't have to do this, if you don't want."

Tim blinks up at her. She's basically sitting on his erection, has felt how hard he is for her for the past hour or so of making out like teenagers. "Is that actually your way of saying you don't want to," he asks directly, because he hasn't yet remembered how to care about someone else's feelings.

"Oh," Georgie says, amused. "Considering how much you bitch about Jon, you are _so_ much like him sometimes. No. I want to. I just also want you to want to."

"Well, great," Tim says sharply, more offended by the comparison than he'd like. "I do want to. So there you go." Boisterous, reaching up and dragging her into a rough kiss, palming at her tits. But she pulls back again.

"Hey. Stoker," she says, takes his jaw. "I know we haven't known each other long. But I _like_ you." Not afraid of anything, including admitting her feelings. "If anyone's unspooling tonight, I want it to be mutual."

Tim is a little taken aback at this, so serious. But he does maybe finally understand where she's coming from, what she's worried about.

"When I said that," he explains awkwardly, "I meant... other people, not you. I mean, because, I've been dating you, yeah. Just for me. Just because I wanted to. It's not a transaction."

"Right," Georgie says, voice softened. "So long as you're sure."

This girl.

On the night before they leave for the Unknowing, he has her over to his place. It's a right mess: he's a bachelor, he often drinks to sleep, he has all sorts of rubbish amassed as part of his attempts to find Danny, and quite frankly, this past year his general hygiene has gone down the toilet.

"So this is why we always end up at mine," Georgie says, taking it in.

"To be fair," says Tim, "You live closer to Chelsea _and_ Central London, it'd be ten more minutes on the tube if we came here."

"Yeah," agrees Georgie. "But also: this pigsty."

"Yep," says Tim heavily. He shifts from foot to foot. "Sorry. This was probably stupid, it's awful and I didn't have time to clean but you deserve better than —"

"Tim," she sighs softly. "It's fine. Do you have a second set of bed linens?"

Tim has to really think about it, but he's pretty sure he does. Georgie makes him fetch them, and makes up his bed all fresh and new, shaking the pillows into their cases. Tim watches her and thinks, the saddest thing about the fact that he's going to die tomorrow is he won't get to look at her hands anymore, the moue of concentration Georgie gets when she's focusing on a task. Won't get to hear her laugh, or learn all the different ways she cares for people. Won't get to tell her about Danny.

Unless.

When they're spooned up naked in the clean bed, Tim says, "All right, this is going to absolutely ruin my chances of getting laid on what might be my last night alive, and I know it, but... I'd really like to tell you about my brother."

It's not like how he told Martin, angry and determined to win an argument. It's not the unspooling he gave Jon. It's abrupt, disjointed, segues into childhood anecdotes and the way he'd loved Sasha. He cries during the telling, scalding tears, and she strokes his hair. When he's done he goes down on her, fills up all his senses with her pleasure, and he's supposed to feel better after, supposed to feel healed, but whatever Jon did left an open wound and nothing good can be anything more than a temporary bandage.

In the morning she fries him bacon, naked but for one of his shirts, and the sun is peeking out from London's usual gray. It feels like it could be a beautiful late summer day.

"You'd better come back, Stoker," she murmurs into his chest, "Or I am really going to have something to say to that great big bloody eyeball."

Tim feels light, and certain. He doesn't make any promises he already knows he won't keep.


End file.
